XSLT Stylesheet works with a vbs script, but not Perl - perl

Question

I have a program that is essentially a search application, and it exists in both VBScript and Perl form (I'm trying to make an executable with a GUI).
Currently the search application outputs an HTML file, and if a section of text in the HTML is longer than twelve lines then it hides anything after that and includes a clickable More... tag.
This is done in XSLT and works with VBScript.
I literally copied and pasted the stylesheet into the Perl program that I'm using and it does everything right except for the More... tag.
Is there any reason why it would be working with the VBScript but not Perl?
I'm using XML::LibXSLT in the Perl script, and here is the template that is supposed to be creating the More... tag
<xsl:template name="more">
<xsl:param name="text"/>
<xsl:param name="row-id"/>
<xsl:param name="cycle" select="1"/>
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="($cycle > 12) and contains($text,'
')">
<span class="show" onclick="showID('SHOW{$row-id}');style.display = 'none';">More...</span>
<span class="hidden" id="SHOW{$row-id}">
<xsl:call-template name="highlight">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</span>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="contains($text,'
')">
<xsl:call-template name="highlight">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-before($text,'
')"/>
</xsl:call-template>
<xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
<xsl:call-template name="more">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="substring-after($text,'
')"/>
<xsl:with-param name="row-id" select="$row-id"/>
<xsl:with-param name="cycle" select="$cycle + 1"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
<xsl:call-template name="highlight">
<xsl:with-param name="text" select="$text"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:otherwise>
</xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>

Answer 1

I believe the problem is that your XSLT is searching the text for CR characters - 
.
Windows files use the CR LF character pair to terminate each line of text, and a version of Perl running on a Windows system will strip the CR to leave just the LF.
This provides an API compatible with Linux-like systems, which use just LF in the first place, but means your XSLT stylesheet doesn't find any CR characters when it looks for them.
I suggest you change your stylesheet to search instead for LF characters, which will be present at the end of every line regardless of the file's origin, and will be seen by both Perl and VBScript.
I think character codes are best expressed in hex, so you would change '
 to '
throughout your XSLT code.
Note
By making this change your strings will be left with a trailing CR after you use substring-before($text, '
'). You can either leave this in place — I don't think it will do any harm as it won't be rendered by a browser — or you can remove from the string that you pass to the more template when you call it
<xsl:call-template name="more">
<xsl:with-parameter name="text" value="translate($text, '
', '')"/>
...
</xsl:call-template>
That would leave the template with a clean string to process, containing no CR characters.